Prep Team, a Hunger Games story
by Technomad
Summary: We see Katniss' prep team several times in the books. What goes on in their heads, behind their bizarre makeup and smiles?


Prep Team

A Hunger Games story

By Technomad

Every year, they come.

Every year, it's the same.

My teammates and I, we are tasked to make the Tributes look their best. With the help of the designers who create their symbolic costumes, we turn ugly ducklings---at least by the exacting standards the Capital has for beauty---into glorious swans.

We never know what we're going to get. Sometimes it's a boy, sometimes it's a girl. The ages range from twelve all the way up to eighteen, and we've had Tributes from each of the Districts over the years. No two are alike.

Some of them are obviously terrified. They know, all too well, the odds---twenty-four Tributes go into the Arena, but only one comes out alive. Others are enthusiastic. Some of them have been trained, on a _sub rosa_ basis, by their Districts, for years for this moment. But even the most enthusiastic have their moments when their bravado is pierced. And at night, we often hear them crying, or calling out in their sleep. Calling for their mothers, or their fathers, or anybody to help them, to save them.

There's nothing we Prep Team members can do for them. After all, if the Panem authorities can continue the Hunger Games decades after the rebellion they were designed to punish was put down, what do you think they'd do to _us_? Nobody wants to be an Avox, and that's not the only, or the worst, thing they can do to a would-be rebel. We're eminently replaceable---we're skilled, but there are many others with our level of skill---and dissent is treason.

So all we can do is the best we can. We soothe the fearful ones, wipe the tears of the ones who can't stop crying, take messages left for their families, and make them look absolutely marvelous for the audience.

I can't look at them---at any Tribute---without thinking of my own children. I have three, and they're all the same ages as the Tributes. But for luck---the luck that they were born to Capital parents instead of out in the Districts---they might be in the position of the children who pass under my hands.

I know, all too well, what my subjects think of me. They're usually polite enough, but I can tell what they're thinking---I _am_ a parent myself, after all. They think that I, and the rest of the Prep Team, are airheaded sybarites who're obsessed with parties, feathers and pleasure.

In many ways, we are. Most people here in the Capital don't have to work, and we Prep Team members only work a few weeks out of the year. That's a lot of time to fill, and we're not encouraged to do anything that's demanding or mentally challenging. The Panem Government likes to see us enjoying ourselves, and there's always parties to go to, fads to follow, and new styles to try out.

It's like they're trying to distract us, so we don't notice what really goes on.

But at night, when I can't sleep, I lie by the side of my latest lover and wonder. Why do we have the Hunger Games? What did the Districts rebel about, anyway, and---heresy of heresies---were they justified? What could possibly justify this annual slaughter of innocent children, by other children, decades after the actual rebels must have died?

And I have no answers.

Every year, I come to know my latest subject. They look at me, the natural trust a child should have warring with caution in their eyes, as I transform them. By the time of the Games, I know them, in some ways, better than their parents do. There's nothing like knowing that you're going into the Arena in a short time to show what you really are.

Letting them go is difficult, but not the hardest thing I have to face. They aren't mine, after all---they can never be truly mine. All that is mine is the image they project to the jaded audience out there, and to the broadcasts to their home Districts. I like to think that on that, at least, I do a good job. My superiors think so. I've been praised for the meticulous, skilled work I put in on each Tribute.

They say: "You couldn't do a better job on them if they were your own children!"

They mean it as a compliment. The first time I heard it, I nearly lost control. For a second I flashed on what my Tributes' parents must be going through, and it took all of a lifetime of rigid self-control to keep me from flying for their self-satisfied throats. Being killed, or made into an Avox, wasn't the threat that stopped me. It was the thought of what they could do to my own children.

For the sake of my own children, I swallow my feelings, hiding them behind a smile that feels utterly false. One good thing about the heavy make-up we in the Capital wear is that hiding one's real thoughts is much easier than it would be if we were bare-faced.

Every year, I watch the Hunger Games by myself. My children and my current lover watch, too. It's mandatory, after all. But I always watch in a separate room.

I don't want them to see my reaction.

How could I explain to them why I can't stop crying?

THE END

(Author's note:_ This was inspired by the scene in _Catching Fire_ when Katniss is being prepared for the last time by her prep team_.)


End file.
